1. Glyph
   Tittle
2. Shape
   Ink

All the letters on this page are glyphs. Non-letters like hieroglyphs are, as their name suggests, glyphs. A glyph is a written or carved symbol that has a specific meaning.

1. Stick
   Finger
2. Tine
   Pin

Forks have tines, which is a word that comes from the Germanic "Zinne" meaning pinnacle. A tine is a fixed metal part that sticks out from the main head of the fork. Forks may have as few as two or as many as four, typically speaking.

1. Defenestrate
   Window-chucking
2. Oopsing
   Sill-shoving

"Fenetre" is the French for window, so defenestrating someone means shoving them out of a window. It can be very dangerous to try this on any floor above the first.

1. Drunkenness
   Beerbelly
2. Beerified
   Gambrinous

Gambrinus is a semi-mythical historical figure from Flanders or thereabouts, who loved a drink and is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a saint. Being gambrinous does not mean being drunk, merely being nicely merry and sated.

1. Rasher
   Sliver
2. Chunk
   Stick

A rasher is a thin slice of meat, usually used only to refer to bacon. Nobody's totally sure where it comes from but the word is at least four centuries old, proving that bacon has been appreciated for a long time.

1. Bruxism
   Grindation
2. Gnashing
   Nightgnashing

Bruxism comes from "brukhein", the Greek for gnashing of the teeth, plus the English suffix -ism. If you find yourself doing it too often, see a dentist!

1. Scintillating
   Shining
2. Blazing
   Fuming

Scintillating literally means giving off sparks, in the sense of a very hot piece of metal struck with another piece of metal. However these days it also means a smile, a witty remark, or occasionally a great personality.

1. Interrobang
   Shouter
2. Query mark
   Ellipsis

The interrobang was invented in the 1960s as a portmanteau of the words "bang" (for the exclamation part) and "interrogate". It is not used much due to never making it onto the QWERTY keyboard.

1. Double-eighter
   Lemniscate
2. Eights
   Loop-the-loop

This word comes from the Greek and literally means "decorated with ribbons". The infinity symbol being a sideways 8 does look a lot like ribbons.

1. Baldy
   Chromedomer
2. Shinytop
   Pilgarlic

Pilling used to mean peeling, and garlic when peeled is very shiny. That's the origin of this word that does not just mean a bald person, but one who is viewed with contempt by virtue of being bald. Teasing people for baldness is a rather mean bullying tradition that goes back to the Bible.

1. Pointer
   Winklepicker
2. Tapper
   Clog

These days if you try to buy a winklepicker, you will end up with an ankle boot with a pointy toe. In the 1950s it was less boot-like, but it still had the same wonderfully expressive name.

1. Tittynope
   Bits
2. Bobs
   Dribs

This comes from "tittle" meaning not very much, from the Latin titulus, and it's our favorite word today. Indeed, we truly struggled to winnow down the incredible offerings of the English language for this quiz, but this word was a shoe-in. We promise it's real.

1. Bloated
   Glutton
2. Rotund
   Corpulent

Corpulent doesn't just imply fatness. It's a luxurious and extreme kind of fatness, that is like obesity but more expensively obtained (say, by eating an awful lot of foie gras instead of an awful lot of Kraft singles).

1. Agelast
   Sulk
2. Jerk
   Douchebag

An agelast might find something funny, but they don't laugh. Still, don't kid yourself that they're laughing on the inside, because they probably aren't.

1. Sickener
   Nauseant
2. Vomiter
   Puketastic

A nauseant is any agent that will make you feel sick if introduced into the area. For example, if you walk into a bathroom that hasn't been cleaned in a year, you could reasonably say that the air was full of nauseants.

1. Hole-punch
   Stiffener
2. Grommet
   Collar stay

A grommet is a stud or metal circle that reinforces the place where two pieces of fabric are joined. Typically you use it on hard leather and other materials that you cannot simply sew together without special equipment.

1. Kleptocrat
   Kleptomaniac
2. Biblioklept
   Kleptograph

Klepto means to steal and biblio means a book. This is a Greek portmanteau word that literally means "book-stealer".

1. Dithering
   Fiddling
2. Suppurating
   Lollygagging

Lollygagging isn't just procrastinating or dithering. It means holding up other people and not getting things done, both at the same time, with an extra potential implied nuance of getting out of doing your fair share of the work. All in all, it's a fine descriptive word.

1. Oscar
   Fusspot
2. Flibbertigibbet
   Curmudgeon

This word is not exactly an onomatopoeia (a word that literally sounds like what it is, such as pop or snap). However, if you heard it but did not know what it meant, the context and the sound of the word combined would certainly help. A curmudgeon is like Oscar the Grouch, a person who just finds something to be annoyed about no matter what.

1. Insalubrious
   Weird
2. Nasty
   Scary

An insalubrious neighborhood is not just unsafe, it also means that it is dirty, poorly maintained, and probably ugly. This excellent word carries multiple nuances and is not pretentious, being instead a very good ten-dollar word to introduce into conversation.

1. Ganglion
   Dendrite
2. Synapse
   Lobe

A dendrite is the long bit on a neuron (brain cell) that connects it to another neuron. The number of such connections is believed to be even more important to being able to think than how many actual neurons you have.

1. Discombobulated
   Flummoxed
2. Confused
   Deranged

Discombobulation carries more than one nuance. Unlike flummoxed where you're merely puzzled, or upset where you are merely distressed, it combines the two, meaning you have to be confused, thrown off your game and in distress to be discombobulated.

1. Tryhard
   Braggart
2. Whippersnapper
   Blackguard

A whippersnapper is a young person with confidence that is not justified by thier resume, usually characterized by irritating bragging and never admitting that they are wrong about anything. They generally tend to either grow out of it or somehow achieve elected office.

1. Runcible spoon
   Ye sporke
2. Fanciful spoon
   Knifelet

This word appears in a Lear poem from 1871 and it's pure nonsense - or it was. It has since become a sort-of real word. However these days "spork" is a much better word for a similar thing. The runcible spoon is Lear teasing his pal George Runcy.

1. Cacophony
   Polyphony
2. Saxophony
   Telephony

"Phonics" meaning of or related to sound is the root here. The first syllable in this instance comes from the Greek "kakos" meaning bad. Hence, "bad sound" is the literal meaning.

1. Kerfuffle
   Spatula
2. Tiffin
   Argument

Kerfuffle is actually a mix of the old Scots word car, meaning bend, and English fuffle meaning disordered. So a kerfuffle means that things have gone awry.

1. Zoology
   Zoolatry
2. Zoo
   Zoom

Just as idolatry is the worship of idols, zoolatry is the worship of animals. If you worship an idol that is shaped like an animal, it's really a judgment call which one you call this.

1. Umbriferous
   Shadowish
2. Shadiferous
   Penumbral

Umbra comes from the Latin for shadow, and is the root of umbrella, among other words. Umbriferous is something of a ten-dollar word and not to be used in ordinary conversation, as it might be pretentious.

1. Helion
   Sun-grazing
2. Perihelion
   Elliptical

A comet that goes close to the sun is a sun-grazer. It's entirely self-explanatory. We put it here to trick you after some tough ones, so if you didn't fall for it, well done!

1. Elongation
   Gravitationality
2. Super-stretching
   Spaghettificatrion

If you fall into a black hole, you get stretched really long, like spaghetti. It's a case of scientists realizing that not everything needs an obscure and impossibly unmemorable name. Sometimes they just call it like they see it.

1. Noseplasty
   Schnozzectomy
2. Craniaplasty
   Rhinoplasty

"Rhino" means "of or relating to the nose". It's the same prefix as in the word "rhinoceros", an animal named for its giant schnozz. Hence, rhinoplasty = nose surgery.

1. Panurgic
   Steady
2. Stolid
   Prep

Just as Pangaea was a continent with all the land and pansexual means attraction to male, female and everything in between, panurgic means being ready for anything. "Pan" is from the Greek for everything.

1. Singledom
   Spinsterism
2. Misogamy
   Bachelority

Just as monogamy means marrying one person, and misanthropy means disliking all people, "mis+ogamy" means hating marriage. It doesn't just mean hating your own marriage or a specific one though, it means hating marriage generally.

1. Cantillate
   Hymnify
2. Songify
   Preach

Cantillating is like singing but it carries the specific tone of the church or temple. It comes from the Latin for song, and is related to cantor, cantata, etc.

1. Meiosis
   Apoptosis
2. Osmosis
   Photosynthesis

Apoptosis is when a cell reaches the natural end of its life. It is a good thing; if cells do not die and just keep replicating, that is called cancer!